GOOD FOOD FESTIVAL FILM SERIES: CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF THE SANTA MONICA FARMERS MARKET

Double Feature!

DIVE! / THE GLEANERS & I

Santa Monica Farmers’ Market and Slow Food Los Angeles Present

The next installment of the Good Food Festival Film Series focuses on how we can keep food from going to waste both here and abroad, with the American documentary DIVE! and French New Wave pioneer Agnes Varda's THE GLEANERS & I. A panel discussion will follow the films with Timothy Vatterott (DIVE! producer and composer), Rick Nahmias (founder and executive director of Food Forward, and Felicia Friesema (an L.A. County Master Food Preserver and a contributor to L.A. Weekly, moderated by Lisa Lucas Talbot (Slow Food Los Angeles).

Following the film, our guests panelists will elaborate on several of the issues raised in the films to present a local perspective. Q&A moderated by Lisa Lucas Talbot, co-leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA regional governor for Southern California.

DIVE!

2010,
45 min,
USA,
Dir: Jeremy Seifert

By turns amusing and infuriating, this multi-award-winning documentary looks at the staggering amount of perfectly good food - more than 250 million pounds a day - that goes to waste in this country. Director Jeremy Seifert and friends bring the point home by dumpster-diving behind Los Angeles supermarkets and salvaging thousands of dollars’ worth of groceries that would otherwise go straight into a landfill. While store owners seem indifferent about the issue when confronted by these guerilla filmmakers, DIVE! is sure to inspire viewers to action, both within their communities and at their own dinner tables.

French New Wave pioneer Agnes Varda’s marvelous "wandering road documentary" focuses on the centuries-old tradition of "gleaning" in France - literally, picking up the cast-offs of others. Varda follows rural scavengers who gather leftover vegetables after the harvest, and urban scavengers who collect discarded food and appliances from the streets of Paris. Varda interweaves these scenes with her own intimate thoughts on aging, humorous interviews with judges and attorneys who debate - Monty Python-style - the legality of gleaning while standing in potato fields, and a host of other spontaneous musings on French art and culture. Through it all, the director’s patient sense of social obligation shines through, as she asks again and again, "How can one live on the leftovers of others?" Winner, Best Non-Fiction Film - National Society Of Film Critics.